Thursday, June 08, 2006

Faculty, Addressing

Teaching faculty are very important people. Be sure to address a faculty member by his or her earned title, "Dr. Smith," rather than by the familiar name, "Sally." This shows the important teaching faculty that you respect them. They will no doubt reciprocate this respect by letting you pull their books from the stacks, forgive their overdue fines, and babysit their classes while they're away at conferences.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Also, if you choose to go by your first name, even if you could be going by a title, everyone will assume that you don't have that doctorate (or, alternatively, that MRS degree).

Anonymous said...

Or even worse ... babysit their class while they are on VACATION. Not only are they having fun while you work, THEY are the ones getting PAID for it!

f is for Fer; he failed to floss said...

Yes, indeed. The revelation of librarians being at least three rungs below teaching faculty on the evolutionary ladder never gets stale. Keep those cards and letters coming.

As for how faculty might address us, there's always the TQM innovation sensation called nametags. Nothing screams "I'm a professional with several graduate degrees - respect me!" quite like a nametag. Well, possibly a smock, but I don't care to give administrators any bright ideas.

"May I biggie-size your list of reserve books today? OK, please pull forward..."

Anonymous said...

I guess some professors are so insecure this would be true. But, I really couldn't care less what you call me as long as you help my students.

Anonymous said...

Another way to save yourself is to be like me: athletic, male, minority. I have found it makes the majority culture uncomfortable and faculty only deal with me when no else is around. I came pretty close to being tagged with an MRS attachment recently. I still hold a funeral and pour a forty out on the curb for the homies that did not make it.